


Bullets And Bucket Lists

by trancer



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Bisexual Female Character, F/F, Femslash, First Time, Recreational Drug Use, mentions of anal sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 01:28:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4587834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trancer/pseuds/trancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Semi-sorta Inspired by <a href="http://museelo.tumblr.com/post/126186164109/red-swan-post-apocalyptic-au">this gifset post</a>. In a world where the dead have come back to life, a Bail Bonds person and a waitress find comfort and solace in each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bullets And Bucket Lists

"Name's Ruby," was all the woman said as she slid into the passenger seat, slamming the door behind her.

For the past 37 hours, they'd been fighting side by side, fighting for their lives in a world where the dead were coming back to life. 

"I have to find my son." Emma's eyes were stern, resolute. She turned the ignition, slammed the stick into gear. There would be no negotiations.

"Then..” Ruby ejected the clip to her gun, began loading bullets. “Let's go find your son."

**

It took them three weeks to cover the 83 miles to the small seaside town in Maine. A town with no people. Abandoned cars and broken storefront windows, smoke from smouldering fires. Storybrooke was a veritable and literal ghost town.

They made it to the mansion on Mifflin Street. Emma didn't bother knocking, just pushed open the blocked door. They were a team now, Emma and the waitress named Ruby. They searched the house in silence. Whatever tragedy had affected the world, the tiny town named Storybrooke, it never made its way into the mansion on Mifflin Street. Everything was still clean, still neat, dishes in the machine, food wasting in the refrigerator with no electricity.

Emma made her way upstairs, to the bedroom obviously lived in by a young boy; toys and comics and video games strewn across the floor, superhero posters on the wall. Emma sat on the edge of the bed, leaned her shotgun against her knee. Time ticked away, as Emma sat in her son's room, absorbing the life she dreamt he'd have all those years ago when she gave him away.

Eventually, Ruby made her way to the room and Emma realized just exactly how much time had passed. Ruby stood, shoulder leaned against the frame, wearing nothing but a towel as she dried her hair with another one.

"Shower still works," she said off Emma's passing glance. "But, no electricity, no hot water." Ruby took a moment to make another pass with the towel over her head. "We'll find him, Emma."

Emma nodded, leaning forward, elbows on her knees as she blankly stared at the desk across from the bed. Stared at the picture taped to the corner of his computer, next to the diorama made of popsicle sticks of the playground fort. Emma and her son, Henry, the photo taken in one of those picture booths. She'd taken him on a tour of Boston. One of the best days of Emma's life, as she quelled the thought she might never get the time to have another moment again.

"Henry, he found me. He just.." she huffed a disbelieving chuckle, head shaking in disbelief, "showed up at my front door and told me he was my son. That was a year ago. Me and Regina.." she paused, running a hand over her head. Three weeks getting to know the woman standing in her son's doorway and Emma had never talked about her son. The child they were both fighting to find. Talking about Henry meant talking about a lifetime of regret. The stupid teen-aged girl who thought the 'rhythm method' was as good as a condom neither she nor her boyfriend at the time could afford to buy. The child that walked into a prison, walked out a convicted felon. Those ten years spent walking down the winding, twisting and broken road to becoming a better person. Only to open her front door and realize how much farther she had to go.

"Henry's adopted mother, we made an arrangement. If Henry wanted his bio-mom in his life, she wasn't going to disagree. So, she let me see him. I was planning to take him to Disneyland when, well, the world went to Hell."

Ruby let her eyes wander, gazing about the room. "Is he anything like you? Your son?"

"Yeah." Emma lifted her head, goofy grin smiling. "He kinda is."

"Then, trust me, if he's anything like you?" Ruby smiled back. "He's still alive. And you're going to find him."

With narrowing and curious eyes, Emma gazed back at Ruby like she was finally seeing the woman. That familiar face in a screaming and panicked crowd. Emma only knew her as the waitress at that diner around the corner from work. The one who always had a smile on her face for Emma, the waitress with a tight shirt and even tighter shorts. And here they were, almost a month later, growing closer to something resembling friends. Maybe something more.

"Why are you still here?" Emma shook her head. "With me, I mean?"

"My Gran always taught me to trust my instincts," Ruby shrugged. "Since my options were creepy biker gang or Bail Bonds person with a gun. A Bail Bonds person who, I might add, isn't afraid to punch a cop in the dick."

Grin widening, Emma let out another chuckle. She hadn't been impressed with the Sheriff from Georgia. He wasn't a bully with a badge, just the type who thought the badge and gun made him an expert on everything. A self-imposed 'leader', and Emma didn't trust him to lead her into a 7-11, let alone through a zombie apocalypse. One heated disagreement and a cock-punched set of testicles later, Emma was on her own, the waitress named Ruby in tow. "Yeah, well," Emma smirked, "he deserved it."

"That he did," Ruby lifted her eyebrows, nodding. She made a tilting point with her head. "Not that I was intentionally looking, but I did notice the liquor cabinet is still fully stocked. I've never been one to make the smart choice first but if I were to say there were two people on this planet that deserved to get drunk? It's us."

**

Ruby had already started on the scotch by the time Emma made it out of the shower. She plopped down on the comfy (and expensive) leather couch, still dripping and dressed in nothing but a towel. Then again, Ruby hadn't changed either. Who slid a glass towards Emma before refilling her own.

Ruby leaned back into her corner of the couch, arm casually draping over the back as she gazed at Emma over the lip of her glass. "You know, you haven't mentioned any significant others."

"Admittedly," eyes narrowing off the familiar tightening below the pit of her stomach, Emma huffed into her glass, "neither have you."

"That's because I like to keep my options open."

Emma took the moment to finish her drink, leaning forward to refill her glass. She leaned back, taking another leisurely sip. Side by side for almost a month with an unnamed tension between them. Now, that tension had a name. "Ruby Lucas,” Emma finally said, still leaned forward as she turned her head towards the other woman on the couch. “You're either drunk or you're flirting with me."

"Why not both?" Ruby lifted an eyebrow, tongue surreptitiously poking a corner of her lips. "It's the apocalypse, Swan. If I'm going to die? I'd like to have one more orgasm before the end." Freehand drifting towards the edge of the towel, Ruby pulled it open. She gazed at Emma, all predatory eyes and wolfish grin, as her thighs casually drifted apart while everything underneath that towel became exposed. "Tell me you haven't thought about it.. and I'll stop."

Those days before the end of the world, when Emma was just a Bail Bonds person taking a break from work at the diner on the corner. The friendly smiles, the casual hand on a shoulder. All those times her co-workers swore up and down it was all more than casual flirting, that Emma should make the first move and ask the damn woman out on a date.

Except, Emma Swan didn't do relationships. She'd learned long ago it was better to be the one walking away than the one walked away from. But, admittedly and, for Emma, sadly, it'd been awhile. Sure, there'd been the baby-faced sailor during Fleet Week. Because they were always so inexperienced yet enthusiastically eager. The one-night stand that turned into several with the detective at Boston PD, who knew her way around a pair of handcuffs. The threesome with the Medical Examiner. Emma could do casual. She could do one-night stands. She could do this.

Emma *needed* this.

Tumblr dropping from her fingers and quickly forgotten before it even hit the floor, Emma pounced. All clacking teeth and jutting tongue, she growled at the fingers tangling in her hair, the nails raking against her scalp. Fumbled with the towel still wrapped around her as she slid a hand between them. And Ruby purred as Emma dipped her fingers over soft, thick curls and into heated and swollen flesh. Ruby was wet, dripping almost, like she'd been wanting this for months. Waiting since long before the apocalypse because she'd always been the one to make the first move. She arched into Emma's touch, urgently rolling her hips.

"Easy, baby," Emma purred, flicking her tongue at an earlobe. "Nobody likes a bossy bottom."

"Fuck you," Ruby groaned a chuckle, hand wrapping around Emma's wrist and placing her hand exactly where Ruby wanted it to be. As she lifted the thigh between Emma's legs, heel anchoring into the cushion. "Nobody likes a tentative top."

Emma shifted her hips, not stopping until Ruby's thigh was pressed hard against her clit. It was rushed and hurried, almost frantic. Ruby's nails digging into Emma's back as Emma writhed above her, Ruby crying out from every thrust of the three fingers pushing deep. As the pace quickened.

Emma lifted, just a little, just enough to gaze down at hooded and glazed eyes. To gaze at those barely parted red lips, feel the warm breath of Ruby's every heated pant. This was supposed to be just sex, a way to relieve the growing tension within them, a moment to escape the horror around them. There wasn't supposed to be this tightening around her heart between every hard beat, or the warmth that seeped outwards.

It took the apocalypse but the girl who always ran, who didn't do relationships and here, in this moment, it suddenly dawned on Emma.. she might be falling in love. All her life Emma had been alone. Only to find someone she could trust, someone she didn't have to run away from at the end of the world.

A realization that sent her sailing over the precipice. Face collapsing into Ruby's neck, as her back curled, hips bucking and grinding. As she pressed her palm to Ruby's clit and drove her fingers deep, pushing Ruby over the edge with her.

The air went still, calm. Nothing but the sounds of steadying heartbeats and ragged breathing. Slowly, gently, Emma ignored Ruby's pouting whine, withdrew her fingers. Watched her fingertips as they painted Ruby's lips before the kissing started. Leisurely, exploratory, Emma mapped Ruby's mouth with her own, like she never wanted to forget.

"Emma," Ruby sighed, eyes rolling closed. One hand curling around the back of Emma's head, the other finding purchase on the armrest as Emma made her descent. Lips, hands and fingers working in tandem, Emma grew bolder, hungrier, possessive. The end of the world and this was *hers*. The first or the last time, Emma had every intention of making it memorable. She made her way down, licking and kissing and suckling, until she was wearing thighs like earrings, tongue slithering, prodding, sliding into Ruby's wet and hot cunt. As she teasingly pressed a fingertip to the tight ring of muscles just a little lower. "Fuck!" the last decipherable word uttered from Ruby's lips.

There was the time after, when Ruby recovered. Just ready, willing and able to return the favor. As Emma received a salad tossing that was one for the record books. Eventually, the exhaustion caught up with them, and they collapsed, cuddling against each other on the couch.

"Emma?" Ruby sleepily mumbled.

"What?" Emma poutily grumbled back.

"Do you think Katy Perry's dead?"

Emma lifted her head. "What?"

"It's the apocalypse, you know." Ruby rolled onto her back, arm tucking under her head. "Figured some of these untalented, over-paid douche canoes have to be zombie bowel movements by now, right? Like.. karmic payback for all that shitty music. I'd still do her and everything. I mean, if she's not dead. Cuz, I'm not giving up on my 'Celebs To Fuck' Bucket List. I'm 12 out of 50, so far."

Off narrowing eyes, Emma could just stare and shake her head. "You have the strangest idea of what 'pillow talk' means."

"C'mon, like you haven't thought about it." Ruby sighed, sleepily rubbing an eye with the back of her hand. “Got my ass eaten out by the bassist from Creed, once. He couldn't get it up after snorting too much cocaine. I'd rather've had a limp-dicked pity fuck. God, that was the worst lay of my life,” she groaned, eyes lazily closing as she leaned into Emma. “Pretty certain that entire band is zombie food.”

"Go back to sleep, Lucas." Emma leaned, planting a kiss on Ruby's forehead. Amusing as it might be, she really had no interest in listening to Ruby's list of conquests. "I'll take first watch."

**

"EMMA!"

Instinctively, Emma's arm reached outwards, flailing towards the handgun on the nightstand. Sometime during the night, when she and Ruby switched shifts, Emma chose the bed in the master bedroom over the squeaky leather couch covered in sex grease. Time as a foster kid, time spent *running* taught Emma, even before the apocalypse, sleeping in the nude was a luxury she couldn't afford. Gun in hand, she bolted upright just as the bedroom door burst open.

"EMMA!" Ruby launched herself across the room. "Henry left breadcrumbs!!"

"What?"

"I was in his room looking for a candy bar because, wow, is his mom a fucking health nut and I found this!" She held up Henry's diorama. The playground fort he'd built with popsicle sticks after the original burned down. She twisted it around, displaying the Post-It note attached to the back. "He left this!"

The moment she and Henry had their first real connection. And Henry had made a model of it. Emma held the model with one hand, peeling off the note with the other. Henry's writing unmistakable, written as if he were in a hurry.

_'Ma, Gaspé, Nov. 17'_

"The 17th!" Emma lifted her head, eyes wide with shock. The biker gang in Boston. A sheriff in Saugus. The flat tires and busted radiator caps, the searching for food and water and bullets. And all Emma could see was the time wasted getting to her son. "That was three days ago. Fuck, Ruby, we just missed them."

"But Gaspé?" Ruby shook her head. "What the fuck is a Gaspé?"

"It's not a what.." A tingle ran down Emma's spine, her eyes darting about the walls of the room. Then, she found it. A map taped to the wall. She slid her legs off the edge of the bed. "Gaspé's not a what, it's a where." She lunged across the room, hands planting on the wall as she stared at the map. "Canada."

"Canada? Why would they go there?"

"Regina..” Thoughts and memories and conversations all jumbling together as Emma made the pieces fit. “Daniel used to live there."

"No." Ruby stood next to Emma at the wall. She planted a finger on the map. Gaspé sat on the tip of a peninsula, surrounded by water on three sides, empty land behind it. "I mean why would they go *there*. Look where it is. That's the fucking middle of nowhere. Hell, how are they *getting* there?"

"A boat," Emma gasped, stepping back from the wall. A tiny town in Maine, settled right on the water's edge. "Jesus, why didn't I think of this?” Another step back, Emma turned, already reaching for the backpack filled with her things. “It'll take them at least a week to get there. If I leave now.."

Ruby snaked out her hand, grabbing Emma by the elbow. "We can make it before they do."

We.

The word hit like a punch. The Lost Girl, always running, always alone and here was this waitress, at the end of the world, willing to stay by Emma's side. "Tom fucking Brady."

Ruby tilted her head. "What?"

Emma gave her a half-grin. "Celeb I hope is zombie food."

Ruby narrowed her eyes, fighting the smile curling her lips. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to get rid of me."

"End of the world and me partnered with a beautiful girl and with brains to match." Emma shook her head, smile matching Ruby's. "Figures she'd be a Pats fan. Just my luck."

The end of the world, just not yet. Emma still had to find her son. She was still alive. With Henry's breadcrumbs, and as long as her heart beat within her chest, there was always hope. Now, there was someone else. The waitress from the diner around the corner from work. A Lost Girl in her own way. Like two lost puzzle pieces still trying to figure out how they fit, intuitively knowing that, somehow, they did.

Ruby's smile broadened. Reaching, she tucked a finger into Emma's belt, pulling Emma towards her. "Fucking shut up and kiss me, Swan."

Emma bridged the distance between them, hands reaching to cup Ruby's cheeks. In a moment, she'd be on the run again. This time, for the first time in a very long time, she wouldn't be alone. "Yes, ma'am."

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to Katy Perry and/or Tom Brady fans.. and any members of Creed who may or may not have had bad sex with a groupie. There's also the 'blink and you'll miss it' crossover with 'The Walking Dead'. So, more apologies for those who don't think Rick deserved at least *one* punch to the dick. Also, yes, the cop in Boston is totally a reference to Jane Rizzoli. 'Cuz if Emma's living in Boston, she and Jane have totally crossed paths.. and had a threesome with Maura Isles.


End file.
